UCSF Prepares to Begin Cancer Center Construction

A groundbreaking date has been set for the University of California, San Francisco’s new cancer center at the Dogpatch Power Station site.

Associate Capital is planning to begin construction on the 300,000-square-foot building on Aug. 26, the San Francisco Business Times reported. UCSF bought the 50,000-square-foot parcel where the eight-story center will be built from Associate Capital this spring for $75 million.

In total, the center could cost nearly half a billion dollars. The developer estimates construction costs around $400 million, according to the Business Times. In May, the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank approved the issuance of up to $575 million in tax-exempt, fixed-rate revenue bonds to fund the cancer center.

The proton therapy center will be built in the building’s basement. The development will include clinical space on the second through fifth floors and incubator space on the sixth through eighth floors. When completed, it will be one of fewer than 50 such centers in the United States today. In Northern California, Stanford University’s own proton therapy facility is expected to be up and running this fall.

The Power Station site, located at a former Pacific Gas & Electric power station in Dogpatch, is in the midst of a large-scale redevelopment that would include housing. The Sophie Maxwell, a 105-unit affordable housing project, is set to be completed in October, according to the Business Times. Those residences will be the first of up to 2,600 homes and 1.6 million square feet for which the Power Station site is approved.

Construction of UCSF’s cancer center is expected to be completed at the end of 2028 with plans to open to patients the following year.

In addition to the land on which the building will rise, the University of California system recently added another piece of land in the Bay Area to its holdings: Nearly 100 acres in Belmont, which includes the 46-acre campus of Notre Dame de Namur University as well as the 50.5-acre Water Dog Lake preserve. The university system doesn’t plan to build its own campus on the site, though a UC “institute or other such research center” could rise there in the future, Dianne Klein, UC’s investments director, told the Business Times.

— Chris Malone Méndez